Schools banned phones, so why aren’t kids thriving? A child psychiatrist says we’re only doing half the job

A child psychiatrist says what a school phone ban removes matters less than what parents add back at home: time with someone who truly sees them. (fizkes / Shutterstock.com)If your kid's school started locking up phones this year, that seems to be the new normal. More than three dozen states have passed laws addressing phones in school, according to Ballotpedia, and the stakes are high. Nearly 40 percent of high schoolers in the United States report persistent sadness or hopelessness, according to the CDC's 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

The early results are humbling, though. The largest study of school phone bans to date, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research this spring, found that student well-being dipped in the first year before rising above baseline. Test scores barely moved, and teens didn't show an increase in classroom attention.

Dr. Pamela Cantor has spent her career studying what stress and trust do to a developing brain, first as a child and adolescent psychiatrist treating trauma, then as the founder of a nonprofit that carried that science into public schools. She spoke to me about the brain science behind why focus didn't follow the bans, the gap a locked-up phone leaves behind, and the one free habit she'd ask every parent to try this week.

About our expert: Pamela Cantor, M.D. is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who specialized in trauma for nearly two decades, and she's the founder and CEO of The Human Potential L.A.B.

More than three dozen states now have laws addressing phones in school, but the largest study to date found grades and focus barely budged.

So what did Dr. Cantor think when the school ban was announced? "My first reaction was relief. The data on rising anxiety, depression and loneliness in young people is convincing, and it matters that adults are finally paying attention to it," Dr. Cantor told me.

"Second, a ban answers a narrower question than the one parents are actually asking. Parents want to know how to help their kids, and removing the phone answers how to reduce their exposure. Those are different questions, and the second one has a much smaller ceiling than the first. The first is about the change in vital neural chemistry when children lose time with other humans," she explained.

That doesn't make her anti-ban. "If a school bans personal devices without also creating more opportunities for teacher-student and peer-to-peer connection, there won't be the biological response that counters this neurochemical disruption."

The brain runs on blood flow in real time, and where that fuel goes depends on whether a child feels safe or under threat.

The brain is roughly 2 percent of adult body weight yet uses about 20 percent of the body's energy, according to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and that fuel arrives by blood flow, moment to moment, through a process called neurovascular coupling, as reviewed in Neuron.

"Well-being and focus run on two different tracks, and only one of them responds to removal," Dr. Cantor noted. "Energy follows whatever's firing. A brain that's scanning for threat sends blood and fuel to the structures built for protection."

"Remove the screen without producing safety, and you haven't changed where the fuel goes. It's still going to threat detection instead of learning," she added. "The second thing is less visible and matters more: connection gets displaced. Take the phone away and you've removed the dopamine source without restoring the oxytocin source. That gap was there before the ban."

Taking the phone away without restoring connection leaves the same gap that was there before the ban, Cantor said.

Plenty of families have copied the school playbook at home, with phone baskets at dinner and screen-time apps. Dr. Cantor recalled, "A friend's teenage daughter had 1,700 Snapchat notifications in one day. She took the phone away. Meltdown. A week later, the phone was back. What's actually missing for an anxious, screen-absorbed kid isn't access. It's a connection," she said.

Families were home together for months during the pandemic, yet Brown University researcher Sean Deoni found that babies born in that period had significantly less verbal back-and-forth with their caregivers, as The 74 reported, the brain-building exchange Harvard calls serve and return.

"Proximity isn't connection. Being in the room doesn't restore it on its own. I wouldn't tell a parent to drop the limits. I'd ask what's going on alongside them," she said.

One quick test for parents: does the phone bring your child relief, or anxiety?

Dr. Cantor offered one simple test to determine whether one's child has a problem with their phone. She said, "Watch whether the phone produces relief or anxiety. When my friend's daughter explained why she felt she had to answer every notification, it was fear of losing her friends. That's not what friendship is supposed to feel like."

"Massive numbers of connections on social media aren't the same as real relationships. It's more like a hollow promise, a tank that's momentarily full, then suddenly empty. Watch for changes in your child; that's how you know when stress is taking too high a toll," she cautioned.

The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's bestseller, made the case that a phone-based childhood crowded out play, sleep and face-to-face time, and it has become the ban movement's touchstone.

"Jonathan Haidt has done an enormous service. His data on rising anxiety, depression, and loneliness are convincing, and he's not wrong," Dr. Cantor said. "Where I part ways is that naming the problem doesn't reach the mechanism. What's still missing is the biology of what was displaced: the neural chemistry that was disrupted. And without that deeper explanation, only one solution stays on the table: take the phone away."

She has seen this pattern before. When the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study linked adverse childhood experiences to adult disease in the late 1990s, Dr. Cantor was in clinical practice. She recalled, "A woman would sit across from me and say, I have six ACEs, does that mean I'm going to have a heart attack at fifty? The study named what was wrong. It didn't tell people what to do about it, and a lot of people felt labeled instead of helped."

"Haidt is doing with anxiety what the ACE study did with trauma. It matters. But the framing has amplified anxiety instead of empowering people toward what actually can heal," she explained.

Naming what you see in your kid, out loud and in detail, is an oxytocin event, not just a kind gesture, Cantor said.

"Keep ordinary routines around sleep and meals; they're more stabilizing than they get credit for. And be more of a listener than a talker. Don't probe if your kid goes quiet, don't tell them what to feel. Just stay connected," Dr. Cantor advised.

"Name what you see in them. Effort, kindness, resilience, humor, say it out loud. Take time to do something together, look at them, laugh with them, play with them, and take full note of the positives you see, describing them in enough detail that a young person believes them. That's an oxytocin event, not just a kind gesture. You're delivering nutrition to your child's brain," she added.

"Small, specific observations that are felt as authentic aren't nice-to-haves. They're biological signals. One person who sees a child clearly can alter the chemistry of that child's brain and even the trajectory of their life."

Dr. Cantor has lived through childhood trauma herself and spent nearly two decades treating young people who had lived through theirs. "None of the young people I worked with ever said they'd be happy just to have their symptoms relieved. They wanted a life, a relationship, a purpose, a future. That's what I think kids are looking for on a screen. Not content. Contact, some evidence that they matter and that what they do matters," she reflected.

"Belief is biology. When someone believes in a child, that belief isn't a metaphor. It's a biological event," Dr. Cantor concluded. "Neurons that fire together wire together. This is how brains are built and grown."

Thank you for reading. For more on health, wellness, and GLP-1 medications, I invite you to follow me on Yahoo.

Pamela Cantor, M.D., child and adolescent psychiatrist and founder of Turnaround for Children.

Pamela Cantor, M.D., practiced child and adolescent psychiatry for nearly two decades, specializing in trauma, and founded Turnaround for Children in 2002 after co-authoring a study on the impact of the 9/11 attacks on New York City schoolchildren. She is the founder and CEO of The Human Potential L.A.B., a governing partner of the Science of Learning and Development Alliance, a senior scientist at Tufts University's Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development and an author of Whole-Child Development, Learning and Thriving (Cambridge University Press). She earned her M.D. from Cornell University, served as an assistant clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, according to her AASA biography.

Please note: This article is for general information and isn't a substitute for personalized medical or mental health advice. Every kid is different, so if you're worried about your child's mood, sleep, screen habits or safety, please check in with your pediatrician or a licensed mental health professional. If your child is in crisis, you can call or text 988 in the U.S. to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.